Retail Drug Stores Emerging as Healthcare Hubs for First-Tier Primary Care

Two recent articles provide additional evidence that a new type of first-tier, healthcare hub is emerging. It consists of the following: (1) a retail drug store like CVS or Walgreens; (2) a walk-in healthcare clinic like MinuteClinic; (3) direct organizational and financial ties to a major health insurance company like Aetna; and (4) a reference laboratory patient service center (PSC) for blood draws provided by a company like LabCorp. Here's the first of the two articles (see:CVS Health and Aetna $69 Billion Merger Is Approved With Conditions) with an excerpt is below:The Justice Department ’s approval of the $69 billion merger between CVS Health and Aetna on Wednesday caps a wave of consolidation among giant health care players that could leave American consumers with less control over their medical care and prescription drugs....As the last major free-standing pharmacy manager, CVS Health had revenues of about $185 billion last year, and provided prescription plans to roughly 94 million customers. Aetna, one of the nation ’s largest insurers with about $60 billion in revenue last year, covers 22 million people in its health plans....“The combination of CVS and Aetna creates an enormous market force that we haven’t seen before,” [a commentator] said.....[S]tate regulators and consumer groups have also raised other concerns about the impact of the merger, saying that the lack of large pharmacy managers that aren ’t affiliated with insurers could make it...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Cost of Healthcare Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Healthcare Innovations Healthcare Insurance Lab Industry Trends Medical Consumerism Point-of-Care Testing Source Type: blogs